Abstract:

This presentation will focus on the use of live action and video instruction as a method of content dissemination and to motivate students in learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.  Specifically, this area, dubbed “edutainment”, will chronicle different interactions with students, teachers and community members that utilized live action to video as methods of capturing relevant content in student-centered contexts. The fundamental idea is to infuse one's passion into your methods of teaching, and to inspire others to use their gifts in their education, and thereby connect them to their dreams and aspirations.

Edutainment has recently been a major growing area of education, showing great promise to motivate students with relevant activities. The authors are among innovators who have developed cutting-edge fusions of popular culture and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) concepts to engage and to motivate middle school students, using topics such as skateboarding. The importance of using relevant and practical methods of instruction and curriculum delivery that build on student interests and increase enjoyment in the learning process are critical at the middle school level, especially in the STEM fields. The use of edutainment in this manner is meant to inspire broader interest in mathematics and science for middle school students and to develop a culture of education that makes learning more accessible to all students. This paper surveys the use of such immersive modalities (including some specific vignettes) to involve students and teachers actively with concepts and suggests further directions for the use of demonstrations and videos in educational settings.

Throughout history, there have been abundant examples of entertainment education (also called edutainment), especially for health and social issues. The purpose is to focus on video edutainment in the specific context of STEM education, chronicling large-scale interactions (as opposed to, for example, digital games individuals can play) with students, teachers and community members involving relevant video content in student-centered contexts. The focus on edutainment through video is these examples is on examples related skateboarding, where the entertainment value is significant, but not overshadowing the educational content. This is also done to avoid implying that education is a “bitter medicine that needs the sugar-coating of entertainment to become palatable” or that education and entertainment are “services that someone else provides for you” rather than “things that you do.”

From my work with students in K-12, with whom I have regular interactions due to the field-based nature of my work, I have come to see that students access information in new ways that differ from methods we usually use to deliver content to students. For example, while many learners in my generation have grown up accessing textual information, the use of Google as an Internet search engine to find articles or relevant textual content is quite normal. Yet, for those students currently in middle school, their first step is often to look for a video with content on YouTube and then once they have seen and heard something about a topic, then go and explore it with text and actual experiences. This is the type of modern learner to which I am appealing, as well as to assist the teachers with whom they are working with in schools.

Keywords:

Edutainment, ATEM, action, science, physics, mathematics, skateboarding.